This is day 2 of 3 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Today we are scheduled for a shore excursion to the “Highlights of Rio”. The trip started with a bus ride through the city seeing lots of housing, churches, and preparations for Carnival. A hope that I obtained a picture of the stadium seating constructed to seat about 70,000 of the 1,000,000 spectators along part of the Carnival parade route that I also mentioned yesterday. At the Corcovado Mountains we took the Cogwheel train through the Tijuana Forest up to Christ the Redeemer statue. Unfortunately the fog was very thick, but I will attempt to share some photos so you can experience this wonderful site. We also saw Sugarloaf from a distance and traveled along miles of beaches with thousands of sunbathers and people playing a sport like volleyball that is played with their feet. It was interesting to see a woman serve the ball by kicking it off a mound of sand and other players spike with their feet! We heard about the over 100 hotels and residential areas along Copacabana beach. Many owners turn the building so the main entrance is on the side street to reduce the level of taxes they are accessed. Back on ship we sat on our balcony to watch and hear the large gathering of locals have a pre-Carnival parade down the street outside the cruise terminal. If we didn’t already have dinner plans I would have liked to go out to have the local experience. Instead, we had a nice dinner with friends in the French restaurant to celebrate his birthday. Then we saw an onboard show called Brazilian Roots with a lot of percussion and gals doing traditional dances in their native costumes.
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